Churches and Schools

2007-08-20

Category:politics

I had to go to Arkansas this weekend. While there I listened to a discussion of Democratic candidates. The points were interesting and disturbing.

The conjabulists were in agreement that they would never support Hillary Clinton on the grounds that she is blatantly untrustworthy. The senator from IllinoisArkansas New York just seems to be a bitter person who will stab everybody in the back if it suits her purposes.

This left a big problem because Barack Obama says all the right things except on one issue. They could not possibly vote for him because, "...he don't know the Lord right. If he don't know the Lord I don't know how he can run the country." So, basically these people liked Obama as a candidate except for how he practices his religion.

None of the other candidates were even worth discussing and this caused a great deal of distress. The Republicans were off the table entirely. The only one worth electing could not be voted for because of his religious practice.

While considering this on my drive back north, I had a thought. There seems to an inverse relationship between the quality of public education and the number of churches per capita. Here in Iowa, where public education is pretty good, we have churches, but you probably have to drive a ways to get to one. In Arkansas there's practically a church within a short walk of anywhere you are. Driving through Blytheville one sees multiple churches per block in some areas. Arkansian schools are notorious for sucking.

The full impact of such a disparity shows in the fact that the above-mentioned people would be willing to throw away a candidate they thought would otherwise love because he wasn't a member of their specific religion. Of course it also helps explain places like the Middle East.